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Shattering The Myth That Competition Propels The Best And The Brightest To The Top

It is a commonly held belief in our culture that competition is good for our professional and personal development, our business growth and our economy. We believe that competition motivates people to work harder and the most talented individuals win out over those less competent. Survival of the fittest, right? Competition seems to be in our DNA from the first time we compete for our mother’s attention, to our quest to get the best grades and get into the top schools, and finally, to our desire to rise to the top of our profession for recognition and higher compensation.

In her latest book, A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better Than The Competition, author, Margaret Heffernan, challenges us to look at competition differently. It does not bring out the best in us. In fact, Heffernan makes the point that competition causes us to focus solely on the end goal, the prize. We lose out, not only personally, but businesses also lose their ability to innovate and succeed in today’s economy.

I asked Margaret if she thought some degree of competition is good.

Margaret Heffernan: I think people are competitive. I think they’re competitive enough. I think we have doubled down on competition, to a point that is backfiring spectacularly for us. And I think that, while it has got us to where we are – good and bad – I think it’s severely implicated in many of the corporate scandals that we’ve seen unfold; in many of the corporate failures that we’ve seen unfold. I think it won’t get us to the next stage of business, which, you know, aspirational companies want to reach.

Bonnie Marcus: When you say competition doesn’t result in the best rising to the top, you’re really saying that people who compete better make it to the top, not necessarily the most talented.

Heffernan: Right. So, it’s not necessarily the most talented. It may be those with the pushiest parents. It may be those who are most adroit at learning how to game the system. And also, there are many people in my book who have made – and are making – a terrific contribution to the world; some outstanding technologists and scientists and artists who without competition were they singled out or identified as having something special to offer. I think the fundamental distinction is that the high-achieving organizations – whether it’s schools or companies – are those which have given up on this idea that they can pick winners. And have, instead, decided that what they have to do is make everybody succeed. And those schools, those school systems, and those companies – which are about raising everybody’s growth – not just those of a few – seem to me, to be inherently more sustainable, more creative, more innovative – and more successful.

Marcus: Doesn’t the basic hierarchical structure of an organization contribute to competition?

Heffernan: I think the structure and hierarchy contribute to the internal competition of organizations. And I think, generally speaking, it becomes profoundly distracting at best and disabling at worst. Many, if not most, of our leading corporations still use forced ranking which, in essence, pits everybody against everybody. I think it’s irrational for us to imagine that a structure like that is going to make people share or collaborate, or help each other. And so, I think, it quite deliberately contributes to the real problems about innovation, creativity, and collaboration, which many of those companies suffer from.

Marcus: Where do you start to create the cultural change in organizations?

Heffernan: I think you have to start in lots of places. I think you have to look at, how steep the hierarchy of an organization is. There’s evidence to suggest that the steeper the hierarchy, the higher the degree of dysfunction and corruption in an organization. So you have to think about, “Okay, is this very steep hierarchy helping me or hurting me?” I would argue that it hurts most companies. I think you have to look at how the compensation structure contributes to that. I think you have to look at how the culture contributes to it. And I think you have to look at how you measure the company’s success. In other words, do you expect success within an organization to be achieved by soloists or by groups? And what’s really striking is that we have a real mismatch between the language of success as it is commonly portrayed, which is all around heroic soloists, and the way in which work is done in organization, which is, collectively. And it would be a very nice idea to think, “Ah well, the collective success is all about superstars.” But actually, there’s nothing that supports that. What we know is that, this idea of the heroic soloist means that, if you really believe that that’s how you succeed, then you don’t tend to bring people along with you. For sustainable levels of collaboration, cooperation, and pure functionality, the superstars don’t deliver.

Marcus: What’s your prediction about the future culture of organizations?

Heffernan: I think you’re going to see two very different kinds of companies. I work with a lot of very big multinational companies that are undergoing change at every single level. Because, the market is global, the pursuit of growth is global. And getting all of their people from different countries, cultures, genders, and ethnicities, and telling them to work together is the single-hardest problem they face. No two ways about it. And figuring out how to make these large, complex organizations work without a lot of internal friction is pretty much their number one agenda item. And they’re working and thinking hard to figure out, “What do we have to do differently?” I would say, there’s another group of companies that is pretty much doubling down on command and control. That says, “The world is so complicated, we just need to keep people profoundly and fearfully aligned.” And I think we’ll see those two kinds of characters of businesses become increasingly distinct. And I think it should be interesting to see where people choose to work. And I think it’ll be interesting in the sense that, I think one model may suit some industries better than others.

Marcus: What industries do you see aligning with this collaborative culture?

Heffernan: I would say tech companies, engineering companies, and science companies. I think financial services are trying to figure out where along this spectrum they fit, because of their compliance issues. But they also recognize that, if they’re not very responsive and adaptive, they’re going to be in trouble. A lot of what I think of as kind of traditional manufacturing companies may really struggle. New technology companies may find new cultures easier to evolve than old technology companies. But you never know. There are always outliers, in the sense that, there are always completely traditional companies that just wake up one morning, reinvigorated.

Marcus: That depends on who is leading the company, right?

Heffernan: It sure does. And if we knew what the secret sauce was, we’d bottle it.

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I have been reading Carol Dweck’s “Mindset.” and many of the behaviors described here sound just like those that she dissects. A “fixed” mindset sees human potential as a fixed quantity, and that the goal of competition is to show yourself superior to others. For “growth” mindsets, potential is plastic and something that can be developed, and the real competition is the drive to better yourself and hone your skills. Both types can be competitive, but the latter is a lot less toxic.

Robert, I haven’t read Mindset but it does sound like a similar approach. When we try to succeed by beating others instead of focusing on how we can be the best at what we do, we will fail. The same is true for businesses.